As someone who considers themselves a creative person, i've pondered these ideas quite often, and i'd like to hear others' thoughts on the matter.

How impmortant is Talent, Talent being the natural ability to perform an action, to creative endeavours?

How important is Skill, skill being the learned ability to and perform an action, to creative endeavours?

Do you prize one more than the other? Can you have one and not the other, and still be creative? Are there other factors to consider? Do you disagree with my definitions?

please, Discuss.

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Kest [ Sun Aug 05, 2007 6:26 pm ]

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Talent is only a bonus to skill.

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proradium [ Sun Aug 05, 2007 6:30 pm ]

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I voted "skill". This is coming from a background of Design though, and I admit it wouldn't necessarily be the same for other creative professions. In Design, talent isn't going to be enough to get you by, you start out with thousands of things to learn. From colour theory, to typography, to grids, to proofing. And then you're going to spend the rest of you career refining these skills and learning new ones.

On the other side of the spectrum, if you don't have talent in the beginning you're not going to get very far I guess,

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madadric [ Sun Aug 05, 2007 6:39 pm ]

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i like to think that with practice and learning, you can get good at anything. I am terrible at music. Abysmal. one might say, i have an anti-talent for it. But i like to think that if i were to practice all day every day, i would get good. Probably not good enough to be great though. I don't think i could learn to think like a musician.

On the flipside, i also like to think that anyone can lean to draw at a good competency with training and practice. I definitely believe that skill is vital to creativity, and talent is just you predisposition ofr one form over another.

Another factor, then, could be interest, or desire. if you want it bad enough, you will practice 8 hours a day, you will do the theory until you grasp what others may instinctively understand. where talent may make someone naturally predisposed to a particular artform, that they do it and learn more as they go, desire may make another who is not naturally predisposed actively hunt the information and skills.

Is each as viable as the other? does talent, in the end, garuntee superior results, if the same amount of skill is aquired? Will i ever play the piano again?

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Kaz*CheesyDoritoBomb* [ Sun Aug 05, 2007 7:09 pm ]

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Being creative (imo) is really just using your imagination, skill and talent just help refine that imagination into something that others can see, and therefore are equal in to creative process. Well thats what I think anyway.

PS:I have an example for this but it is based off myself and I doubt it would be constructive to the debate.

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Qylvard [ Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:48 am ]

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From a musicians point of view, you need skill, though talent is helpful. Skill is needed to the extent that you can play all that you want to play, talent means you dont have to practice as many hours to get there. But skill by itself makes very uninteresting music. It lacks... life. Equally important is imagination, to come up with new ideas and picture what you want to do with the music, and energy, to put some physical presence into a performance.

Different music styles take different mixtures of these ingredients, and maybe add something more aswell. Why I used these is that they are the ones I seek to better. I have lots of ideas, but sometimes lack the skill to express them and sometimes makes a bland impression because of lacking energy.

And of course, for most music, lyrics is half of a song. An art I haven't ventured into very much, because of previous abominations when attempting to do so...

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thekillmaster [ Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:02 am ]

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Personally I believe they serve slightly different purposes. Somebody who is skilled at a creative discipline will create works of a consistently high quality but they will exhibit no flair or real style to their work (see hyperrealism in painting - it's closer to high-resolution digital photography than a Monet or Renoir (yes, i'm a whore for the Impressionists)).

On the other hand, somebody who has very little skill but abounds with talent will create works that while not technically complex have a certain something about them that is hard to pinpoint but draws you into the work.

The best artists are talented to begin with and then hone their skills to compliment their latent talents.

Of course, this is all written from the perspective of an artist rather than a writer or musician, but this is the only one of the three creative disciplines I am qualified to comment on.

ptlis

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finalcarrots [ Mon Aug 06, 2007 5:18 am ]

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In writing, talent is the raw stuff you need to actually write. Skill is the ability to distill that talent into a comprehensive and comprehendable work of art.

Talent is an inborn trait, skill is learned. If someone with talent hones their skills, they will exceed someone without talent that is just practicing skill.

Take this as an example -- when Dean Koontz began writing, he was called a hack, a rip-off of Stephen King. Let's go ahead and put bias aside, and say that's true. Dean Koontz's stories follow 10 years behind Stephen King's and his writing is lackluster at best. Koontz has the skill to produce a work of fiction, King has the talent augmented by skill to make a work of fiction good.

I guess what I'm saying is that talent is the more important of the two, but talent without skill is a waste. You just need talent to be good, skill to use that talent. A skill without talent is like a computer copy of a great artist's work -- it looks good, but there's nothing behind it.

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Exiled Soul [ Mon Aug 06, 2007 8:56 pm ]

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finalcarrots wrote:

In writing, talent is the raw stuff you need to actually write. Skill is the ability to distill that talent into a comprehensive and comprehendable work of art.

Talent is an inborn trait, skill is learned. If someone with talent hones their skills, they will exceed someone without talent that is just practicing skill.

Take this as an example -- when Dean Koontz began writing, he was called a hack, a rip-off of Stephen King. Let's go ahead and put bias aside, and say that's true. Dean Koontz's stories follow 10 years behind Stephen King's and his writing is lackluster at best. Koontz has the skill to produce a work of fiction, King has the talent augmented by skill to make a work of fiction good.

I guess what I'm saying is that talent is the more important of the two, but talent without skill is a waste. You just need talent to be good, skill to use that talent. A skill without talent is like a computer copy of a great artist's work -- it looks good, but there's nothing behind it.

That covers pretty much everything I was going to say.

I will add that skill in the creative arts is something grossly misunderstood by people who have never seriously tried them. Which is to say, a lot of people think they could write a novel, but have no idea how much time and labor is needed to pound out even a mediocre one, with, say, complete sentences and paragraphs that people can actually read and understand. Likewise, the quicky versions of articles about the great Renaissance painters talk about their inspiration and gifts, but say much less about how they literally worked dawn to dusk from childhood to adult as apprentices to hone their skills in working with paint and stone. And so on and so forth for music, architecture, engineering, etc.